“No more than a dram vial, surely, sir!” Mr. Mainwaring countered, blushing a bit. “Else…”
“Else you find the reins t’your carriage, and ride out!” Lewrie hooted before turning away for the quarterdeck to leave them to it, and take a gentlemanly separation from the debauchery to come.
The bum-boats were butting up against the hull on both beams, despite the Bosun’s warning that only the larboard entry-port was open to business, that the pimps and dealers in shoddy goods should already know that, and they should row round and queue up proper, or else. It became a scramble among the boats to be first to board, for the doxies to be first chosen, and tradesmen to be first with their wares, causing mild arguments, the sounds of which were quickly overcome with sailors’ cheers and the giggles, titters, shrieks, and crude shouts of the women.
Lewrie took himself a bit further aft, towards the taffrails and flag lockers, putting on a grim, dis-interested expression, as if all of it was beneath him; though he did take more than one peek or two at the whores, the younger and prettier especially. He was the only officer on deck; officers did not stand Harbour Watches as a matter of course, and if his subordinates were not pretending dis-interest below in the gun-room, they were off ashore to pursue the same sort of pleasures as the hands, but more discretely. Midshipmen Grainger and Rossyngton, their youngest, paced the quarterdeck that morning… gawping red-faced and gape-jawed, their wee heads aswim at the sights in prepubescent lust.
It was distantly possible that one or two of the arriving polls were real wives who had found a way to travel to Sheerness once informed of where their husbands’ ship had put in, or the lucky sailor was a Sheerness man to begin with. And it was possible that some women had come aboard only to sell their meat pies, sweet baked goods, and fruit, but… the bulk of them were local whores.
“Hoy… you on the quarterdeck, there!” a woman loudly bawled from the larboard gangway, just after passing the Surgeon’s and the Master At Arms’s inspections. “Izzat you, Cap’m Lewrie? Bugger me, if ye ain’t! Cap’n Alan Lewrie, t’th’ life, by Christ!”
Lewrie whirled about to peer at a blowsy, busty bawd with straw-blonde hair beneath a prim little blue bonnet. Her name had been…?
“Nancy!” he cried back with a wide grin. “Proteus, durin’ the Mutiny in ’97? Damn my eyes, how d’ye keep, girl?” He made a quick way forward to say his “howdy-dos.”
When the North Sea Fleet had mutinied in 1797, Lewrie’s first frigate, HMS Proteus, had been fitting out and manning here at the Nore and had been caught up in it. The Committee of “the Floating Republic” had taken over a dockside tavern for their “shore headquarters,” then decreed that the bum-boat trade could continue, and as many women who wished could come board the rebelling warships… perhaps they’d wished for the less-willing sailors to be kept mellow and pliant with the smuggled spirits, and sex. They’d hired bands and paraded with their blood-red flags through the streets of Sheerness, hoping to spread French-style Jacobin revolution throughout England to overthrow the King and House of Lords, dis-enfranchise the aristocracy, beggar the landed gentry, whatever odd notions that had come into their addled heads. But, when they ordered that no women would be allowed to return ashore, the mutineers had given Lewrie and his loyal men new allies.
When the sailors had run out of money for the doxies’ “socket-fees,” when the authorities had cut off the bum-boat trade and had run the parading mutineers from shore when the Army had shown up, Nancy, and her sisters, had struck a bargain to help Lewrie take back his ship and free the women to get back to earning a living. They had “dealt” with those mutineers who had laid aside their weapons, and their slop-trousers, to be pleasured on the mess deck with what came to hand; a long hat pin, a dagger, a sand- or shot-filled cosh, and other assorted protections natural to their trade, had done for most of the off-watch mutineers, with no mercy for people who could not, or would not, pay them or even share their rum ration with them or feed them a decent portion of their rations.
That bargain had been struck with guineas from Lewrie’s purse, and the promise of more from his London bank; over an hundred pounds sterling in the account books to prostitutes “for services rendered” had sent his wife into a snarling huff… and his requests to both Crown and Admiralty to issue letters of official thanks had raised an host of senior eyebrows, to boot, but… he’d gotten his ship back!
Grudgingly, the doxies had gotten letters from Admiralty, even if the “patriotic efforts” had been worded most marvellously vague.
Nancy had put on a few pounds, but she was still a fetching mort. She took a short clay pipe from her mouth as he got close, and flung her arms round him, almost lifting him off his feet.
“Oh, ’tis been a long time since ye been t’Sheerness, Cap’m,” she enthused, after setting him back down. “And an’t ye a caution! I ’spect ye’re a senior Post-Captain, by now, t’have such a fine, big frigate.”
“It’s good t’see you’re still alive, and prosperin’, Nancy,” he replied. “The Navy still treatin’ ye good? And, how’s Sally Blue?”
“La, a war’s always good t’my sort, Cap’m Lewrie,” Nancy bragged, then turned more sombre. “As for Sally Blue, well… ye know how th’ trade can be, Cap’m.”
Lewrie winced at that news, recalling the little minx with the large, bright blue eyes of such a startling shade, and her long mane of glossy raven-black hair, a coltish teen who’d worked with an older woman who’d claimed to be her mother… and had possessed the unfortunate skill of being as fine a pickpocket as any in the British Isles, “Three-Handed Jenny” of London, included.
“Passed away?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh la, no, sir!” Nancy countered. “Sally lifted the purse of a rich’un she’d tumbled with, and got took up for theft. It was a close thing, her hangin’ for it, but the rich’un pled f’r mercy, and she got transported for life t’New South Wales. ’Er Mam…’member her? Got a letter last year, sayin’ h’it weren’t half as bad as they say ’bout h’it… like ye skeered her with tales o’ sea-snakes as long as yer ship, and all… and she’s married a trooper sergeant!”
“Well, good for her!” Lewrie exclaimed, delighted that she had not died, as most poor whores did. “Even if she cussed like a Bosun, and couldn’t help herself from liftin’ everything in sight.”
“Hoy, the boat!” Midshipman Grainger was calling overside to starboard, followed by, “Bosun, muster the side-party!”
“Thankee f’r rememb’rin’ me, Cap’m,” Nancy said as she turned to go about her business, coyly fiddling with her hair and rolling her hips. “Good f’r bus’ness, ye greetin’ me so warm.” She winked.
“Good enough for a Post-Captain, then good enough for a sailor with money, hey?” Lewrie whispered, winking back.
“Uhm sir?” Midshipman Grainger intruded. “I think the arrival is… I don’t know what to do about him, sir. How many men to muster, and the Bosun…”
“An officer, Mister Grainger?” Lewrie asked.
“Don’t know, sir!” Grainger said with a helpless shrug.
Lewrie crossed over to the starboard side. Bosun Sprague was peering at him, shrugging confusion. Lewrie leaned out to look down into the eight-oared barge that was ghosting up to the main-chains, at its sole passenger.
“What the Devil is that?” Lewrie gawped under his breath. “Turn-out for a Post-Captain might suit, Mister Sprague. Maybe he… it… won’t know the diff’rence.”
It wasn’t a Navy officer, nor was it an Army man, either, though the visitor was garbed in a red coat adrip with gilt lace as profusely as a Turkish sultan.